Collaboration Science

SUN lab researchers explored human-nature relations in a pandemic time

23/06/2022 No Comments

SUN lab researchers in collaboration with Australian and German colleagues studied the role of contact with nature during and after COVID-19 pandemic in Moscow. Scientists from RUDN University, the University of Western Australia, Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research and Wageningen University conducted the research that aims to explore the pathways and implications of human-nature interactions during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and how health problems and pandemic challenges can be mitigated through contact with nature. 

The finding will help to find out what novel actions and adaptation strategies can be established that can have positive outcomes for both humans and nature. The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant; the results were published in the journal Land in May, 2022.     

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Collaboration Ecosystems Science Soils

Russia is a white spot on the tea bag index map: an approach to extend the network of global soil decomposition monitoring

13/06/2022 No Comments

The tea bag approach (http://www.teatime4science.org/about/the-project/) for measurement of microbial decomposition of soil organic matter has been applied for mountain, coastal, forest and arctic ecosystems, while for urban ecosystems located in various biomes such experience is not widely distributed. In Russia there are few amount of sites for which was provided the soil organic matter decomposition assessment by tea bag approach.

Smart Urban Nature team together with colleagues from the Kola Science Centre RAS, Institute of Geography RAS, Southern Federal University, Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science, RAS, the Central Chernozem Reserve, have decided to extend of the global map of the tea bag index and organized monitoring of the microbial activity of various soils in the European Russia with financial support of RSF No. 19 -77-30012.

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Climate Data and Software Ecosystem Services Ecosystems Green Infrastructure Science Soils

SUN Lab presented the results of the third year of the SUN project

25/12/2021 No Comments

SUN Lab presented the results of the third year of the project “Smart technologies to monitor, model and evaluate ecosystem services provided by urban green infrastructure and soils to support decision making in sustainable city development under global changes”, supported by a Russian Science Foundation (RSF).

Research in the third year of the project was focused on 3 main objectives:

  1. monitoring of ecosystem services of urban green infrastructure based on the Smart Urban Nature network;
  2. interpretation of monitoring data for ecosystem services for various target groups and practical tasks;
  3. application of the results of monitoring and modeling ecosystem services to support decision-making in the field of sustainable development of the urban environment.
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Climate Science

SUN Lab scientist explained how particular hot spots in a city form an urban heat island

12/12/2021 No Comments

SUN lab researcher Mikhail Varentsov in collaboration with Russian and German colleagues explained the patterns of temperature rise in megacities. Scientists from RUDN University, Moscow State University, Moscow Center for Fundamental and Applied Mathematics with colleagues from Ruhr University in Bochum (Germany), Freiburg University (Germany) and Berlin Technical University (Germany) found that not only the alternation of local climatic zones, as previously thought, but also the heterogeneity of the urban environment on a scale of several kilometres make a significant contribution to the formation of an urban heat island on the scale of the entire city. This can be compared to the synergy effect, when the result of the interaction of several factors is more powerful than the sum of the effects caused by the same factors separately.

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Ecosystem Services Science

SUN lab experts estimated pets’ significance within ecosystem services classification

25/10/2021 No Comments

Ongoing urbanization has led to a significant increase in the number of pets and has altered the relationships between pets and owners from primarily utilitarian to cultural. Today existing classifications of ecosystem services and nature’s contributions to people explicitly consider only the ES provided by livestock and wild animals. Despite this, scientists from Smart Urban Nature laboratory tried to give it a fresh view and attempted to translate perceived benefits and costs from owning dogs or cats in a megapolis into ecosystem services and disservices frameworks considering such pets as natural biotic elements of a megapolis and thus, essential parts of urban ecosystems.

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Ecosystem Services Soils

The Soil Basis of Smart and Sustainable Cities: How Scientists from SUN Lab expand knowledge about the functions of urban soils

10/09/2021 No Comments

It is a well-known fact that soil is the main component of a terrestrial ecosystem, the balanced functioning of which largely depends on the soil microbiome. Today, in the urban environment, there is an unprecedented anthropogenic impact on the soil, its microbiome and the ecosystem as a whole, which can lead to disruption of their functioning. Researchers from all countries are trying to develop knowledge about the peculiarities of the functioning of the soil microbiome in urban conditions, in particular by studying its various microbial indicators. However, there is no answer to the question of which microbial indicators can most informatively reflect the functioning of urban soils and be useful in planning and improving urban areas.

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Ecosystem Services Ecosystems Green Infrastructure Science

SUN Lab researchers examined how “Islands of nature” save mental and physical health of city-dwellers during pandemic

13/05/2021 No Comments

International research team including SUN Lab’ scientists interviewed citizens of Moscow (Russia) and Perth (Australia) to find out what role urban green spaces played for them during the COVID-19 pandemic. It turned out that the vast majority of respondents in both cities considered contact with nature to be extremely important for mental well-being, and many of them went for walks in their free time, despite the restrictions. The results of the research, supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation, are published in the journal Sustainability.

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Ecosystem Services Ecosystems Green Infrastructure Science

SUN Lab was presented on roundtable “Green and Blue Urban Infrastructure Innovation for Northern Eurasia”

22/04/2021 No Comments

The roundtable “Green and Blue Urban Infrastructure Innovation for Northern Eurasia” took place April 19-20 in Saint Petersburg. During the event there were presented projects related to green and blue infrastructure (GBI) in Russian cities. Speakers representing academic and non-academic institutions, shared their relevant GBI experience and reflections to share. Also the factors of success and failures of such innovation projects given a variety of biophysical and socioeconomic contexts across the country were disscussed.

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Collaboration Data and Software Ecosystems Events Research Seminars

Smart Urban Nature portal concept: in search of ideas and solutions

06/04/2021 No Comments

Last Saturday, the SUN Lab team held the first strategy session in the format of a team brainstorming session.

We discussed the concept of the Smart Urban Nature portal. This is a portal that will allow us to collect, analyze, deliver and present information about the state of urban ecosystems. Such a multifunctional open-access platform, in our opinion, will be a useful tool for different categories of users. During our session we tried to identifine these categories.

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